I’ve talked a lot about laneway housing here on Architect This City. I’m a big supporter and I wish that Toronto would get on board and formally allow them. It’s been done and it is being done in cities around the world. Just this morning, a friend of mine sent me this NY Times article talking about how Portland has embraced the “granny flat”, which is one of the many names used for this type of housing.

Within the article, you’ll find a nice slideshow of “accessory dwelling units” ranging from 300 and something square feet to 700 square feet. (800 square feet is apparently the maximum in Portland.) But what I found really interesting from the article is how quickly these homes have caught on:

Eli Spevak, a local alternative-housing developer who is among those who lobbied for A.D.U.-friendly policies, said, “The city changed two rules, and all of a sudden it went from 30 a year being built to 200 last year” — an impressive figure, considering the total number of applications approved for single-family houses in 2013 was 800.

This is a hugely impressive figure that shows that these homes are not really a niche product. Laneway homes have become a meaningful chunk of the new home market in Portland. Given that they’re a relatively affordable and sustainable option, I’m not surprised. But I am surprised that more cities aren’t following suit.

Last night I attended the kick off party for a new loft / laneway / condo development called Lanehouse. It’s in the Bloor and Dufferin area of Toronto, which is an area I know quite well as I used to hang out there when I was living off St Clair West. I used to go to 3 Speed, Bar Neon, Tall Boys and Bassline.

The project is located at 50 Bartlett Avenue. It’s a renovation of an existing 2-storey laneway structure, as well as the addition of a new building fronting onto Bartlett. In total there will be 16 units. For the 13 “loft houses” going into the existing building, a third floor will be added containing indoor space and a terrace. I’m not exactly sure what the balance of the other units will be like.

It’s a really neat project. But what I’m also excited about is that it’s a type of laneway housing. As many of you will know, I’m a big fan of laneway housing–however difficult they may be to achieve in our great city. But one of the ways you can often build them, is if there’s an existing laneway structure in place–which is the case at 50 Bartlett.

It’s also helpful to have frontage onto a street with a proper name. Otherwise you have a “house behind a house” condition. Most laneways aren’t named and the city doesn’t consider them to be a real street. They’ll ask: what would your address be? So even though you may be able to access them from a laneway, the city would view those houses as having no real frontage.

There are of course many other obstacles, but those are some big ones.

While I would love to see the city actually jump on board with laneway housing (and develop proper policy around them), I’ll take this project as evidence that we’re headed in the right direction–towards a city where laneways have been rebranded, repurposed and entirely reimagined. That’ll be an exciting time.

As a follow up to my recent post called “Disrupting everything”, I thought I would share this talk by venture capitalist Chris Dixon at Y Combinator’s Startup School. In it, he talks about why good ideas often seem like bad ideas at first.

Chris frames the discussion by saying that when you have a good idea—that everyone else thinks is a bad idea—you effectively know a secret. But by a secret, it’s really that you believe something that nobody else believes to be true. So much so that when you try and tell everyone else about your secret, they all think you’re crazy, which is frustrating because it seems so obvious to you.

He then provides a number of characteristics that can help you identity good ideas that seem like bad ideas:

• Powerful people dismiss them as toys.

• They unbundle the functions done by others.

• Did it originate as a hobby?

• Do they challenge social norms?

Now, he’s obviously talking about startups, but I think the framework can apply outside of the technology world. I think it can apply to cities. 

To give you one example, let’s consider laneway housing. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’m a big supporter of laneway housing in Toronto. But that it’s something the city generally does not support.

However, there are laneway houses being built and they’re being built by architects and progressive urbanists. Some might even call it a hobby, because it remains a pretty tough business model at the moment.

Personally, I think one of the main reasons the city is unwilling to formally allow laneway housing is because it challenges social norms. I’ve read the staff reports and the meeting minutes: people think it’s weird to live off a laneway. In fact, in one case somebody asserted that since laneways are generally undesirable urban spaces, anybody who would want to live off one is almost surely a social degenerate.

But there’s absolutely nothing inherent to human beings that says we can’t live off a 5m wide street or that we can’t have a “house located behind another house.” Those are simply constructs we’ve created for ourselves.

So the next time you hear about an idea that you think seems like a bad idea, ask yourself: Is it really a bad idea or does it just make me feel uncomfortable because it contravenes the norm? Taking yourself out of your comfort zone is a good thing. It’s how we grow.